Improperly Placed Firearms

aka: I Know That Gun

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The practice of giving inappropriate firearms to characters or factions in a TV show or movie. They're generally inappropriate because they are either outdated, too modern for the setting, or because the group in question wouldn't have access to them (like Soviet soldiers wielding Uzis).

Needless to say, it isn't restricted to guns, but they are always the first and most notable victim. Which is strange, as it's generally a lot easier to get a few MP-40's than to arrange for a Tiger tank to show up in your production.

One reason this can happen (especially for things more expensive than guns) is that the "right" weapon may not be available, and an incorrect version easier to come by than it would be to make a replica. For example, Chinese AK clones commonly stand in for the real thing in American movies made during the Cold War. An extreme case would be armoured vehicles; there is only one WW2-vintage Tiger tank that still runs in the entire world and leasing a running mock-up from a private collection would be far more expensive than simply using some other tank and hoping the audience doesn't figure it out. This goes even more for ships; before modern CGI, movies were often forced to either use contemporary warships (even with a stratospheric budget, Pearl Harbor's Japanese carrier set was built on the deck of a modern carrier, made obvious by the visible steam catapult runs) or unconvincing models.

Anime and video games have no similar excuse, since they can by definition include anything the artists can draw or render, no matter how hard it might be to acquire a real example. One of the major reasons (aside from Rule of Cool and a desire to include the creator's favorite guns no matter how little sense it makes) is that the designers often are not "gun people" and just copy what they saw in movies.

While guns are a fairly mature technology with most new designs being more ergonomic than mechanically different (which seems to boil down to more plastic, short stroke gas piston, and different ergonomics than any actual innovations), some shows will push this and it gets unrealistic when a gun is still in use in an entirely different universe, 1,000,000,000 years from now, or 100 years before it was designed.

Examples:

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General Examples

The M1911 service pistol (usually the M1911A1 variant specifically), shows up in a lot of Science Fiction as the signature gun of characters who have access to VASTLY higher tech weapons. It's often justified by being much simpler and potentially more reliable than those other sci-fi weapons (a reasonable extrapolation to make from the real world, where it's already over a hundred years old, pretty outdated in some ways, and yet still in common use).

In the Honor Harrington novels, Honor notoriously carries one and puts it to great use in the 40th century, when more contemporary weapons could easily tear apart a real-word tank. It turns out she's in the SCA, which by that time practice with gunpowder firearms the same way their modern counterparts practice archery. There are also noted to be several advantages to using a contemporary firearm, such as the fact that the sound of firing one is much more intimidating in a universe where people are used to the comparatively quiet "pew pew" of a pulser, and that it's easy to sneak into places because modern weapon scanners search for a power source the M1911 simply doesn't have.

A very common one is use of the wrong AK variant. Sometimes you see Soviet/ex-Soviet soldiers in a reasonably modern setting wielding the original AK or the AKM. In reality, they'd been mostly replaced in Soviet service by the AK-74 (which can be identified by a smaller, less-curved, orange-coloured magazine, as well as a large muzzle brake on the end of the barrel). Lord of War is an example. Recently, however, 7.62mm AKs, either former mainstays of the AKM line, or more modern AK-10x series, made a resurgence, after combat experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya demonstrated that the lighter bullet of the AK-74 tends to ricochet at the slightest prodding, and is thus unsuitable in forested areas. Thus there can be some unexpected aversion, when a bumbling producer accidentally gets things straight.

In reality, the AK-74 was just starting to make its way to the export market before The Great Politics Mess-Up. The vast majority of AK variants in the world are of the AKM variety or the Chinese Type 56 clone, both firing the original 7.62x39mm cartridge.

Misidentification of pistol caliber in live action TV/movies. Hollywood pretty much standardizes around the 9mm blank, so many firearms identified as .40 S&W or .45 ACP will often have a 9mm "stand in." With something like a Glock, which comes in several different calibres and variants that are only really differentiated by tiny letters on the slide identifying the caliber, it's barely even noticeable. With the M1911, a common stand-in has been the Spanish Star Model B, a visually similar 9mm pistol, especially in older movies made before actual 1911s in 9mm existed. Still, visually telling the difference between a 9mm and .45 barrel is very very tough, and made even more because we almost never look straight down them.

Substitution of a common firearm variant for a rare one. Machine pistols such as the Beretta 93R or the Glock 18 generally aren't sold outside of government agencies even if the armsmaster has a Class III permit; the usual solution is to drop a full-auto sear into the semiauto variant. In fairness it's not particularly hard to dress a Beretta up as a 93R, and the only obvious difference between semi and full auto Glocks is the ported barrel which you can only see from above and the small fire selector near the back of the slide, so most people aren't going to lose much sleep over doing this. The Joker's Glock in The Dark Knight is one notable example.

An interesting case occurs on the cover of Paratime by H. Beam Piper. The main character is shown holding a Steyr AUG assault rifle. This supposedly represents a bolt-action rifle which U.S. law-enforcement types in 1948 thought looked unusual and advanced ... but not extraordinary or science-fictional.

The Steyr AUG has a long history of appearing in works set 20 Minutes into the Future or even the far future. Even now, its sleek profile looks like something that shouldn't exist quite yet, despite having been around since the late 70's.

Some productions going for a British feel sometimes use Armscor shotguns since these are marked with the British-sounding name of "Squires Bingham." Armscor/Squires Bingham is actually a Filipino manufacturer.note Though it was started by expatriate Englishmen.

Speaking of British characters and guns, it is important to note that American AR-type rifles in the hands of British soldiers may not be an example of this trope given certain conditions. If the soldiers are members of the SAS or a few other special forces units that do carry both American made M16s/M4s and the Canadian versions, the C7s/C8s, then it is not an example of this trope. British Army and Territorial Army soldiers using them, however, would be an example of this trope.

Another weapon that frequently shows up in odd places and times is the FN P90. Its futuristic looks see it in the hands of plenty of far future armies, or weapons that are clearly based on the design, despite the weapon itself having been developed in the late 1980's. It also lands in the hands of an inordinate amount of terrorists and mercenaries, despite almost exclusive sales to special forces units, police SWAT-style units and presidential bodyguards.

Due to their unique appearance, especially their helical feed magazine which can take up to 100 rounds, Calico firearms have appeared in several sci-fi shows including I Come in Peace (aka Dark Angel), the parody Spaceballs and the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Time and Again".

Rebarreled M2 machine guns are often used as stand-ins for the Soviet DShK heavy machine gun, especially before the end of the Cold War (when it was just unavailable).

The Beretta BM59 is sometimes used as a stand-in for the M14. As the two weapons are both modifications of the M1 Garand, this is rarely noticed.

Anime and Manga

Played straight and subverted in Angel Beats!. The characters use realistic guns, which operate as one would expect guns to, but they're supposed to be in high school. However, it turns out they're actually in a sort of Purgatory, and said weapons can be created and used, so long as the engineers who created them also knew how the thing worked. Which is hilariously subverted in episode 2 when they pull out a gigantic cannon to use against Angel, and the entire thing blows up in their face since none of them knew the mechanics of an artillery gun.

Note that mechanically that cannon is actually much simpler than many of the Rare Guns that appear in the hands of characters.

Cowboy Bebop is set in a future with space gates, large spaceships and advanced almost-sentient computers, yet every personal weapon seen is either very similar or exactly identical to present-day ones. Spike himself uses a Jericho 941, Jet a Walther P99 and Faye a Glock 30. The anime tries to convey the idea that it's set in a somewhat realistic and retro future, so it makes sense that there are no blasters and that energy weapons are few and far between and too large for anything other than ship-based mountings (though it's never explained why Spike has a plasma cannon on his Swordfish II, when even police fighters are restricted to machine guns). You'd think personal firearms would have evolved at least a little. Plenty of the weapons shown in the series were out of date even when it first started in 1998. But then again, everything in Cowboy Bebop is retro.

It's worth noting that Spike's dated Jericho can fire in the vacuum of space. The pistol might be mundane, but the bullets are better than what you can buy today.note Bullet propellants usually contain all that's needed for combustion, meaning that normal guns should be able to fire in the airless environment of space. However, there's also nothing to radiate the heat away from the gun. So, while the gun can probably get off a few shots it would quickly overheat, causing the barrel and other parts of the gun to expand, rendering the moving parts unable to move. Also, exposure to hard vacuum can cause many types of non-specialized lubrication to flash-evaporate, meaning the gun might not even fire in the first place. Space is not a good place to use most regular firearms.

In Gankutsuou, which takes place in the 50th century, Danglars uses a gold-plated PPK/S, and Morcerf a gold-plated P08.

Code Geass is rather strange in this regard. Taking place in an alternate timeline supposedly equivalent to the real 1960's, most of the firearms seen are fictional, but the few identifiable ones seem like very odd choices in the context of the series. The standard Britannian pistol appears to be a slightly modified Heckler & Koch USP45 or Mark 23 pistol, while the service rifle looks like some kind of cross between a FAMAS and an FN P90. Considering that, in-universe, the EU and Britannia are mortal enemies, it makes very little sense for Britannian troops to be using German, French, and Belgian arms.

The ECOAS spec ops troops in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn use FN P90s, despite the series taking place at least a century or two into the future. Earlier in the timeline (such as in The 08th MS Team), Federation troops are often shown using rifles that are very nearly carbon copies of the Enfield SA80, while Zeon troops are described (but not shown) as using old AK-47s. The mobile suits' non-beam-firing weapons are also often based off of real-world weapons, such as the updated Zaku machine gun from Gundam 0083 being an upscaled AR-15 dressed up with parts from the original Zaku machine gun.

Most of the guns in the Ghost in the Shell franchise are based on real-world weapons, some of which are outdated today (even though the series takes place circa 2030 A.D.) and are frequently Rare Guns as well. The FN P90 seems to be particularly popular with the creators, as half the guns in the franchise are at least partially based on it.

Noir both subverts this and plays it straight. Of the main characters, Mirielle uses a modern Walther P99, which subverts this. This trope is played straight with Kirika's Beretta Md. 1934. Instead of giving her the more widely available Walther PPK (which uses the same cartridge and is almost exactly the same size), the production staff deliberately gave her an out-of-production World War 2 vintage pistol because they didn't want to give her "the James Bond gun".

Gunslinger Girl is an heavy offender, with Marco's Steyr GB pistol, Henrietta's Walther WA 2000 sniper rifle and Triela's Winchester Model 1897 trench gun being quite improper for an assassination team sponsored by the Italian government (and most of them doubling as Rare Guns to boot). Henrietta's WA 2000 is the only one of those that's appropriate at all for an assassin, except that no assassin is likely to have access to them because they're all in private collections, while Triela's shotgun gets a pass on being a somewhat diffuse war residuate and a personal choice of hers (they have tried to make her switch to something else, but she refuses).

Subverted by Petra's SITES Spectre submachine gun: while also a rare gun it's exactly the appropriate weapon, being actual Italian special forces hardware used to bring instant firepower at close range.

In another episode one of the girls' minders appeared to be carrying a Filipino Floro SMG, which is an odd choice given that it is only locally used in Real Life since attempts at foreign sales all failed.

In the various version of Cutey Honey, Panther Claw goons wield Luger P.08 and Nambu Type 14 pistols. While the Luger may be justifiable, as while the main production run ended in 1942 a few smaller production runs were made until 1986 (and total production was a few million) and the ammo abounds, the Nambu ended production in 1945 (and was always scarcer than the Luger, at less than half a million produced) and the ammunition is extremely difficult to find.

Hicks carries as a backup an Ithaca 'Stakeout' shotgun, and the Marines' sidearm, the VP 70, is a real, unaltered weapon with a 'futuristic' look. The Sulaco's weapon racks are also filled with unaltered modern weapons; M16s, Colt Commando rifles, and Enfield L85s. Vasquez also uses a Smith & Wesson Model 39 pistol at one point. Alan Dean Foster hangs a lampshade on the first of these in his novelization, when one of the Marines asks Hicks if he got his shotgun from a museum.

Bear in mind that the gun props in Aliens look suitably futuristic enough that they actually avert this trope for anyone who's not a firearms expert. The M41A has become iconic in its own right. The props for it were made by combining a Thompson submachine gun and a Remington Model 870 shotgun, but they're contained in a futuristic-looking plastic shell so there's no way to tell they're actually 20th century guns. The various other rifles on the weapon racks are not really intended to be paid attention to - they're just to show that the Sulaco has a lot of guns onboard.

Odd example in Goldeneye, this is one of the movies where real AK-74s are shown alongside fake ones (Both modified AKM or Type 56 like the Rambo examples as well as rubber props). Bond himself did get a hold of a real AKS-74U. Oddly, Xenia and Trevelyan is seen with fake ones in some scenes. Probably because they don't have enough of the real AK-74 as the movie demands.

The movie Pitch Black featured a shortened Armscor M30R6 12ga. shotgun dressed up a little to look futuristic. It either shot slugs or was treated as an energy weapon.

In Escape from New York the United States Police are armed with M16s with the handguards removed (which would burn the hands of the people using them).

In Rambo movies, you will notice many. Since part of Rambo III was filmed in Israel, the production had access to genuine Soviet hardware captured during the wars with the Soviet-backed neighbours while it was there.

Russian helicopters fitted with western weapons (such as the FN MAG machine guns) and even western helicopters with attachments to make them look like Russian choppers (and made them extremely difficult to fly).

ZSU-23 Shilka replica made using an M113 chassis in Rambo 3.

AKMs, AKMSUs, or Chinese AK replicas modified (such as adding the muzzle brake) to look like AK-74s and AKS-74s since Hollywood did not have access to those weapons at those times. Sgt. Kourov in the third film uses one of these dressed-up AKMs mounted with a US-made M203 grenade launcher, instead of a Russian made grenade launcher for the same reasons above. Because the two weapons weren't made for each other, the actors were forced to sort-of grip the magazine in an incredibly awkward fashion◊ to fire the launcher.

A fake SVD made from a Valmet with an SVD-style stock in the second movie. The SVD is quite rare in the United States even now, and at the time its look-alike the Romanian PSL hadn't been imported either.

In the sci-fi movie Enemy Mine the human pilot is armed with a stainless steel Walther PPK.

The main weapon of the German soldiers is the MP 40, despite the movie taking place in 1936. The MP 40 was the MP 38 slightly redesigned to be cheaper to manufacture and a little safer to carry, and the two are visually nearly identical, but still falls 2 years too short. Of course, as the Germans were collecting paranormal technology, they obviously must have gotten a hold of a short duration time-machine.

Some German officers are armed with Walther P38 pistols, which would not be produced until 1938; only hammerless prototypes of the gun existed in '36, which probably wouldn't be in the hands of any soldiers.

Something more jarring: Near the finale, Indiana Jones threatens the bad guys by aiming at them with a rocket launcher. Ignoring the fact that such weapons didn't even exist at the time (they only came about during the war as a more powerful upgrade from the anti-tank rifles used at the time), said weapon is actually a post-war RPG-2 with several cosmetic addons.

Another, smaller goof, is that Indy is at one point seen with an Inglis Hi-Power, a Canadian variation of Browning's design that didn't begin production until 1944. Even having the original FN Hi-Power, like he does in the bar shootout,note Indy was originally envisioned as having the Colt 1911 for at least this scene, but as above, since 9mm blanks were more reliable they went with the Hi-Power instead would have been a stretch, since it would have only been in production for a year at best at the time of the film. Moreover, the initial sales were almost all for military contracts and FN had an agreement with Colt at the time to not sell its guns in the United States. So Indy would've needed to meet up with an FN sales agent in Europe and special-order the pistol.

Justified in Lifepod (the sci-fi remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat) where one character is carrying a 20th century revolver because it will get through spaceport detectors that will pick up contemporary energy weapons.

A case of being a bit too accurate is in the movie adaptation of The Fourth Protocol, where the KGB agent played by Pierce Brosnan uses a Soviet Makarov pistol — as an 'illegal' carrying out an operation that must not be linked to his own country (setting off a nuke outside a US Air Force base to fake an accident) it's the last weapon he'd use.

Remo Williams had the hero being tracked as he ran through the woods by what was actually the High Power Illuminator Radar. It is the distinctive 'Mickey Mouse ears' system. This is a radar meant to 'spotlight' a target for the MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile.

While the production crew acquired plenty of period accurate Martini-Henry rifles, the production used up all of the available blank cartridges for its obsolete caliber. Thus, some extras wound up with anachronistic Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk I bolt-action rifles instead.

The movie version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen used several anachronistic guns with cosmetic changes. Dorian Gray used a gilded Luger P08, Captain Nemo used a Tokarev TT-33 pistol with ornate external decorations, his men have equally ornately-decorated Sten Mk II submachine guns, and the antagonist's mooks used Uzis, Thompsons, and AK-47s essentially encased in rectangular metal boxes. Given that Nemo by virtue of the source material has anachronistically advanced technology in the form of his submarine, and the Big Bad is ProfessorMoriarty, one is left to presume that in-universe they invented these weapons themselves.

They also used Mark V tanks, which were developed at the very end of World War I — in 1899!

In the film A Bridge Too Far, most of the American paratroopers (including their Colonel, played by Elliot Gould) are seen carrying the M1 carbine, rather than the modified M1A1 carbine (a smaller, easier to carry weapon with a folding wire-stock) that was specifically designed for and issued to American paratroopers. Many of the M1 carbines are also seen with the post-war modifications of a bayonet lug and/or adjustable ramp rear sight. The sergeant played by James Caan carries a carbine with both of these anachronistic modifications.

Hilariously in the film version of Bullet Proof Monk, the Nazi villain's Mooks use Uzis. The Uzi was created by an Israeli.

In A Few Good Men, Kaffee notes that Lt. Colonel Markinson committed suicide with a .45, yet the scene depicting his death clearly shows him shooting himself with a Beretta.

Averted in Buffalo Soldiers in a nicely self-referential way. The plot revolves around how relatively easy it was to sell off large amounts of weapons stolen from US army bases in Germany. After the Cold War ended and US troops returned home, vast amounts of materiel were left behind. One member of the film crew owned 100 of the appropriate guns to lend the production. Where one character is given a particularly heavy gun to carry on exercises as a punishment, there was some difficulty in sourcing this gun.

The Hurt Locker has several scenes with U.S. soldiers wielding Beretta 92 pistols, the precursor to the 92F/FS (which is used by the U.S. military under the "M9" designation). The DVD commentary reveals that the blank-adapted 92FS prop they intended to use was delayed in customs, and the writer Mark Boal had to go hunting for a replacement locally. He eventually found a Jordanian General who gave the production team an old 92 to use until their own prop could clear customs. Fortunately the two pistols were similar enought to fool most moviegoers.

Captain America: The First Avenger has the British agent Peggy Carter, whose weapon is a Walther PPK handgun. The movie is set during World War II, when the most famous users of this gun were the German police and the Nazi Party officials. This can be somewhat justified by two facts:

The Walther PP (Polizei Pistole) was introduced in 1929, the PPK (Polizei Pistole Kriminal, i.e. "Detective's Pistol") followed it in 1931. Both were available commercially before the war, in both the UK and USA.

When the war started, one of the first things the British SOE and American OSS did was acquire as many German and European-made handguns, rifles, etc., as they could lay their hands on, with special emphasis on anything that was military- or police-issue in occupied territory. The reason being that arming their agents with the other guy's weapons made it easier for their agents to acquire ammunition, etc., and harder for the enemy to trace back to their agents if the gun needed to be used and then disposed of.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows features the Germans manufacturing or using several firearm models that are anachronistic for the film's early 1890s setting. Chief among them is the classic Mauser C96 pistol, which (while not referred to by name on-screen) wouldn't have been manufactured for at least a few years later (production stared in 1896). It is also incorrectly referred to as capable of fully automatic fire, while the real thing was only semi-automatic (in fact, one of the very first semi-automatic pistols). It would only receive full-auto variants during the interwar period (1927 at the earliest). Also, several of the artillery pieces seen in the film (especially the German mortar) would only come into existence a few years prior to World War I, at least more than a decade after the events of the film. However, the uniforms and Gewehr 88 rifles used by the German guards and soldiers are period accurate. A non-weapon goof that fits this trope is that the "German" steam locomotives in the film are actually of British manufacture and wouldn't have been around for another few decades.

Most of the guns used by the USDF in Alien Outpost are dressed up South African Galil copies, which is all well and good. What's odd is one soldier using and XM177, a weapon that went out of production in the 70s, and the German soldier pulling out a Luger P08 (the ones they used in WW2).

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has a handful of guns that don't quite fit its Civil War timeframe. Blondie uses a Winchester 1866 "Yellow Boy" rifle (slightly modified to make it resemble a Henry rifle) and Tuco finds both an 1868 Garland revolver and an 1889 Bodeo when he's robbing the gun store. It's a common misconception that Blondie's revolver, an 1851 Colt Navy converted to fire cartridges, is an anachronism, but such conversions were available as early as 1858.

Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men uses a Glock 19 pistol in one scene. Glock pistols were not produced until 1983. The movie takes place in 1980.

Live-Action TV

Deadliest Warrior, in the IRA vs Taliban episode, the British soldiers shown fighting the IRA are clearly equipped with American M16s. Only the Special Air Service (SAS) ever used those (or variants of them). Usual British soldiers would have used L1A1 SLR rifles (FN FALs, effectivelly) in earlier decades, or the L85 (SA80) bullpup assault rifles in more recent decades.

In "Time and Again", the terrorists use Calico pistols and the Detonics Pocket 9. At least the producers went to the trouble of selecting weapons that looked different from regular firearms and are obscure enough that people who aren't gun enthusiasts wouldn't recognize them.

In "Nemesis", the Vori Defenders use bullpup assault rifles including the British SA80, while Kradin soldiers use a Kalashnikov model that's been modified with plastic coverings. This is meant to invoke the gung-ho action movies of The '90s, as propaganda is a major theme of the episode.

The Doctor Who story The Impossible Planet features the people on the base wielding P90s, a gun which would be several thousand years old at that point.note All in all, P90s shows up in all sorts of strange places in Doctor Who. the BBC must have ordered a surplus.

Utopia then takes it to a completely ridiculous extent. Guards are shown using Dragunov sniper rifles (a gun designed in the late '50s) in the year 100 trillion. For reference, the universe right now (in the real world) is allegedly 13.7 billion years old. This episode takes place over seven thousand times the age of the universe into the future (95.9 trillion), and they're still using a gun that is almost obsolete now!

On the other hand, Utopia does have a Just Before the End setting where it's implied that there's no longer the resources or population to keep high technology working.

The Doctor's Daughter features a Webley revolver in a futuristic clone-war. Yes, the favoured weapon of the original Brigadier. It also featured P90 gas-jet mock-ups, oddly enough. Couldn't they have just reused the G36s they had on hand?

UNIT, an elite military formation, is armed with bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifles which had been declared obselete in British service nearly twenty years beforehand; they also had WW2-era Vickers and Bren machine-gunsnote Brens are still in service, just about. But the Vickers dates back to before WW1

The soldiers in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone also use P90s, although these have phony suppressors dummied on to increase their length. Interestingly, the suppressors resemble Dalek extermination beam projectors.

A well-known old school example is the prominent use of MAC-10s by future (or alien, it isn't clear) Private Military Contractors in "The Caves of Androzani", as well as the people on the Beacon in "Revenge of the Cybermen".

The episode "Cold War" has a 1980s Soviet submarine's crew using Browning Hi-Power pistols, which are most definitely not Russian and look nothing like the actual Soviet service pistol of the time, the Makarov PM.

The 1960s-era series Combat!! (set in World War II) sometimes used what appeared to be M3 submachine guns (which were actually issued to US troops at the time) with some modifications in external appearance in place of Nazi MP-38s or MP-40s.

Similarly disguised Reising submachine guns were also used in some episodes. Like the M3, the Reising was also distributed to US troops in WW2, though in more limited numbers.

The episode "Mad over Miami" features a bad guy holding something he claims is a new American heat-seeking missile launcher, which he uses (unsuccessfully) on Airwolf. It's very clearly an RPG - a Soviet rocket launcher with no heat-seeking capability.

In the pilot movie, a HAWK missile is seen launching, to be identified by the heroes as a 'heat seeking missile' (the HAWK is a semi-active radar guided missile).

In one episode, the Bulgarian secret service mooks at a prisoner exchange are holding StG-44s. This weapon was used in a few Warsaw Pact countries, but only as an interim substitute for the AK-47 and they were long gone by the 1970s.

The episode "Fall Girl" had the odd incidence of British Special Branch agents armed with Soviet TT-33 pistols.

Stargate SG-1 both commits and averts this trope, often even in the same scene. From season 4 onwards, the team's MP5 submachine guns (which ARE issued in the U.S. military) were replaced by the Belgian FN P90 personal defense weapon. The only American users of the P90 are the Secret Service and some U.S. law enforcement agencies. However, actual U.S. military weapons also appear in the show quite often: the Beretta M9 pistol, the M4A1 carbine, the M16 assault rifle, and the M249 SAW to name a few. Another straight play of the trope occurs much later in the series: when Cameron Mitchell joins the team, the SGC starts using the H&K G36 and MP7 PDW.

Word of God is the 9mm round fired by the MP5 was simply not powerful enough to reliably penetrate Jaffa armor, resulting in a lot of ammunition expended for little purpose. SGC switched to the P90, along with assault rifles, specifically because the 5.7mm round has extremely good penetration against a variety of materials, making it more effective against Jaffa than the MP5. The real life reason for the switch was for safety. When an episode required the cast to stand side by side and firing weapons, the crew realized the hot spent casings from the MP5's would be flying into actors' faces. Since the P90 ejects spent casings downward, the switch was made to maintain the safety of the actors.

During the opening phases of the second Gulf War, it was necessary for the Stargate production crew to cut down on their use of the P90, with it only being carried by O'Neill, whilst Carter carried the 'Carter Special'. This was due to the fact that factories that would otherwise have produced the 5.7mm blanks were busy producing live rounds.

This trope is played glaringly straight almost any time the SGC runs into an offworld civilization that's using firearms. There is one episode where the other civilization was clearly using M1 Garands and AKs.

The use of (for example) the P90 by Stargate Command has some real-world plausibility, even though it's not standard U.S. military equipment. In real life, Special Operations Command can make use of RFI (Rapid Fielding Initiative) to bypass the usual slow-moving procurement system and buy whatever they need directly. SGC would be in a somewhat analogous position to SOCOM (i.e., a relatively small but well-financed and highly important element of the military), quite possibly with even more RFI freedom.

It's worth noting that although the Stargate program started out as a secret operation by the US military, throughout the series it became much more international in character. Russia was heavily involved from quite early on, a few other countries (the UK, China and France most prominently) had at least some involvement, and by the time of Stargate Atlantis (concurrent with seasons 8-10 of SG-1) it had become much more open. The main cast of Atlantis included a Canadian and a Scottish character, with only two out of six main characters actually being American (the other two being Human Aliens). So non-standard and non-American weapons may not be as out of place as they might seem.

There was an episode of Hogan's Heroes where an American M7 Priest (a self-propelled artillery piece from WWII), painted grey and given iron cross decals, stood in for a German AFV. They even use the Priest's gun to set off some dynamite they've wired to a bridge at one point.

In most episodes of Rat Patrol, doctored up M3 Halftracks and M7 Priests (likely the same ones used on Hogan's Heroes) stood in for their Afrikakorps counterparts.

The Peacekeeper Pulse Rifle from the show Farscape bears a remarkable similarity to the Steyr ACR, sans magazine and wrapped in tin foil.

An in-universe example in an episode of Jake 2.0, where one of the clues that the guys holding him are not German Secret Service is that one of the guys has a Walther PPK. Being a Hollywood Nerd, he instantly recognizes James Bond's favorite gun. He's also an experienced NSA agent, so he knows that nobody uses these anymore. The other clues are constantly-dropped movie quotes ("Can you outsmart a bullet?") and a watch too expensive for a government agent. Turns out they were just hackers (American hackers) playing a prank on him (or rather, on the person they think is their leader).

The Steyr AUG seems to be the standard rifle aboard Red Dwarf. Given that most of the ship's crew members are American and British, it is rather odd seeing them using a type of bullpup rifle which their nations had so far never adopted en masse. Presumably this is because of their futuristic look and because they'd be unfamiliar to British and American audiences.

There are so many M3 Grease Guns and Stens captured by the People's Liberation Army in the Chinese civil war and the Korean War, it's hard to not film a war show in China without them. Cue dozens of anachronistic shows with M3s appearing before WWII. For really low-budget shows, it is possible for a Type 56 AK to appear in Imperial Japan hands. It's also common for the Type 54 (a copy of the Tokarev TT-33) or Type 64 (Walther PPK) to stand in for other pistols.

Mal's signature pistol in Firefly is based off a US Civil War-era Volcanic repeater for the Western feel. From it's on-screen performance it's much more accurate and powerful and its use is accompanied by a hissing/whirring noise showing there's evidently something more high tech in there. The prop itself is a shell built over a contemporary Taurus Model 85. Jayne's handgun is a modified replica American Civil War-era LeMat, an American-designed, French-built revolver that included a shotgun barrel.

Video Games

Metro 2033's unspecified type of a .44 Magnum revolver, to the point of becoming almost a Running Gag on the series' wiki. Not only is the type of bullet it uses only widespread in America, but revolvers nowadays aren't that widespread outside of the US. There hasn't been a .44 round manufactured in Russia for decades, and Metro 2033 is set in the ravaged remains of Moscow in an alternate near future. Guess the whole choice just runs on pure Rule of Cool.

In Grand Theft Auto III, FBI agents at the 5th wanted level strangely carry AK-47s, an odd weapon for American law enforcement to carry. In the other GTA3-era games, they carry the MP5, a more plausible weapon and one which acts in the game as a more logical "mid-power" weapon between the Uzi carried by the level-four SWAT teams and the M16s carried by the army at six stars, while the AK is carried only by criminals after GTA3.

Although Serious Sam, with a 22nd century protagonist, has a fully-automatic rocket launcher (still a dream) and a laser weapon (ditto), it also features archaic weaponry, including unlimited-reload Schofield revolvers, a manual-loading snap-open double-barreled shotgun, an unashamedly labeled Tommy Gun and a man-portable cannon (of the cannonball variety). All of which is hilariously out-of-place in places such as ancient Egypt and Babylon... But forverygoodreasons.

In Hidden & Dangerous 2 and its expansion pack you face Italian soldiers that wield German firearms and tanks. The Japanese feature about the same amount, but in their case the developers took the time to model appropriate weapons. There are also some Italian-model aircraft on the field, yet the pilots seen wear Luftwaffe uniforms.

The box art for Wolfenstein 3D depicts Nazis using M16s, that fire while falling through air, no less, while the SNES port's box has an undefined character (presumably the hero) carrying not only another M16, but also what appears to be a Beretta 92. The box art for its Spear of Destiny expansion features the hero smashing open the glass case of said spear with a Kalashnikov.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein has the female Nazi Elite Mooks all wielding British Sten guns. Whether this is acceptable is up for debate, since the Germans did make their own copies of the Sten near the end of the war, but the majority of them were visibly different from the original and meant for the Volkssturm, which being a militia force made up of people who hadn't already been in the regular army and meant as a desperate attempt to hold off the Soviets, was about as far from "elite" as possible.

In the first level of Medal of Honor: Airborne the player faces Italian blackshirts armed with German weapons like the K-98 and MP-40 in a small village in Sicily. There's also an odd inversion: The 82nd Airborne are missing the M1A1 Carbine (with folding stock), which was specifically designed for paratroopers. Oddly, the gun's holster is modeled.

Call of Duty features an M1A1 Carbine with an anachronistic adjustable rear sight. This can likely be explained in that they had to model it after a real-live example, and M1 Carbines that both saw service in the war and escaped the upgrades afterwards are extremely rare. Call of Duty 2 featured the original M1 with period-accurate sights, but now it's far rarer than it probably should be.

During the introductory assault course, the range master is seen brandishing a chrome-plated Desert Eagle* the same model from COD4 before giving a two-tone one* with misaligned sights to the player character. Keep in mind these are US Army Rangers in Afghanistan: Desert Eagles are definitely not standard issue (nor do the Rangers use chrome-plated anything), and getting caught using an unapproved firearm can land you into serious trouble. Then again, the weapon boxes he opens before you run the Pit also contain a number of weapons that aren't standard-issue, and nobody ever complains if you drop one of your starting guns for one that someone had just been trying to kill you with unless you need to be silent (hell, Soap at one point later in the same game directly asks if you "see anything you like" in the Gulag's armory - one with maybe two guns of Russian manufacture, mind you). It seems that Task Force 141, at least, like many other special forces organizations, doesn't mind too much about the use of unorthodox equipment, though why the player as an Army Ranger can also take guns from enemies without consequence is purely for Rule of Fun.

What's funny to note about Modern Warfare 2 is that only one of the weapons the Russians use makes sense. This is the Dragunov SVD - and even then, it's still in its original, older wooden-furniture version, rather than the synthetic SVD-M that modern Russian forces actually use. The RPG-7 makes some sense, but even that is not the favored rocket launcher anymore, nor has it been for quite a while. Most of the other guns used by the game's Russian forces aren't even Russian - for example, the Israeli TAR-21, the French FAMAS, or the Austrian Steyr AUG. The other ones that are Russian, such as the RPD and AK-47, have long since been replaced in military use. Still others, like the Armsel Striker, AA-12, and KRISS Vector, had not even been put into production at the time of release.

You might be excused for thinking Fabrique Nationale is a subsidiary of the Russian arms industry thanks to these games: the FN P90TR and F2000 are used exclusively by the Russians and Makarov's Inner Circle, while the FN FAL appears exclusively in the hands of other enemies, despite FN being a NATO supplier in reality. The P90 is a beloved PDW for NATO forces, and the F2000 is in service with Pakistan and India... neither of whom are belligerents in MW2; as for the FAL, it was the primary firearm of the British Commonwealth during the Cold War, and is roughly analogous to the American M14; at one time it was meant to be the standard NATO rifle, so finding it in the hands of Russian soldiers is somewhat bizarre. But Infinity Ward apparently thought they looked cool, so here they are.

Then again, all these new weapons are possibly justifiable — by this point, Russia has a new government, so it's possible they decided to revamp their military arsenal. And since evidence in-game points to them having been looking for an excuse to attack America, switching over to an arsenal using the same ammo as theirs makes some sense.

There's also the “G18,” which is a modified Glock 17 standing in for the full-auto Glock 18. As mentioned at the top of the page, this is a common occurrence in films; why they would do that in a video game where they can model whatever gun they want (such as dualsawed-down Model 1887 shotguns being flip-cocked after every shot), is anybody's guessnote the most likely reason is that they modeled it after such a movie gun without bothering to change it at all once they finished it - this sort of thing seems to be a recurring problem in games developed by Activision-owned companies. Additionally, the Beretta 93R machine pistol is actually a 92SB (the same gun standing in for the M9 here and in CoD4) with the skeleton stock and forward grip of a 93R added on.

A plane-based example comes with the F-15s bombing the Gulag in its eponymous mission. The F-15s are used in a Wild Weasel role at the start of the mission, launching missiles at hostile AA guns to let the Little Birds holding the player and other soldiers into the gulag - specifically, they're the AGM-88 HARM, an anti-radiation missile that no F-15 variant is compatible with, and which are called with a "Fox" brevity code (used only for air-to-air munitions). Not to mention as well that the US Navy is apparently the force involved in the attack on the Gulag, and they don't use the F-15 (nor would they ever use an Air Force plane if they can help it).

Modern Warfare 3 adds a Russian machine gun that's actually in use by modern Russian forces (the PKP Pecheneg - ignoring, of course, that it's meant primarily for mounted usage), but otherwise goes all-out with this trope: the new Russian military sidearm is the never-produced MP412 REX while FSO agents use the US Government model of the FN Five-seveN, African militia favor the (conceptual) Peruvian FAD assault rifle, a flashback to Zakhaev's assassination attempt now includes a few Remington RSASS riflesthat weren't there the first time around, and multiplayer allows the use of both the Chinese QBZ-97 assault rifle and the Japanese PM-9 machine pistol, despite neither the PLA nor the JSDF being present anywhere in the game.note Even worse, the aforementioned QBZ-97 (misidentified as the earlier -95) serves as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the second game's FAMAS, when it would have made perfect sense for the FAMAS to reappear given the GIGN are playable in multiplayer and appear in one campaign level.

Taken Up to Eleven in Call of Duty: Black Ops which features several anachronistic faults in regards to firearms shown in the game. The FN FAL in particular - commonly known as the "Right Arm of the Free World" for its use by many Western-aligned nations, including every NATO member state except the US and West Germany - is only used, of all people, by Vietcong and Cuban soldiers in single player. To the developers' credit, the second example is slightly justified, since the specific model of the FAL seen in the game was part of a shipment of about 500 of these firearms, all delivered to the Cuban police. But other parts of the game return to playing this trope straight, since while the Cuban soldiers only appear in the first level of the game it's never explained why every other Soviet-aligned military present in the game uses the FAL as well (or why half of the Viet Cong soldiers armed with them also have American M203 grenade launchers to attach to them); technically, the FAL was also in service as the semi-auto L1A1 Self Loading Rifle with Australian soldiers stationed in Vietnam, so the argument could be made the ones encountered in Vietcong hands are simply captured rifles. It's somewhat harder to justify the highly anachronistic French FAMAS FELIN Russians occasionally use, except the FAMAS was a Russian staple weapon in Modern Warfare 2 first, so it could again just be a matter of following the leader. Also, both the Soviet special forces seen in the 1968 Kowloon mission and the Vietcong in Huế City use the SPAS-12 shotgun – a firearm model from Italy which was introduced in 1982. The turret in the beginning of Vorkuta prison has a mounted American M249 SAW, which was made in 1984. Several campaign levels also feature the KS-23 shotgun, a 23mm riot gun that while at least actually being a Russian model (despite it like the FAL appearing primarily in Cuban and Vietcong hands - even Mason starts with it in a mission or two set in Vietnam) was not designed until 1971 and on top of that wasn't meant for actual combat use. The closest any of these get to an actual justification is the last part of "Crash Site", where the presence of an American China Lake grenade launcher in a downed Soviet cargo plane is briefly handwaved as "some kind of setup" (and a half-hearted one at that, considering all the other guns on board are Soviet SVDs). Somewhere, a firearms enthusiast is drinking themselves to death.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 doesn't have nearly as many examples, partly since there are only four missions set during the Cold War like in the previous game, but it's still around if you look hard enough. A particular screamer comes in the second flashback level, set during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. It would have made all the sense in the world for the game to give some of those mid-80's Soviet troops the RPK-74 used in the first game, given that 90% of the flashback arsenal is lifted directly from it - instead, they're given the old belt-fed RPD machine guns the RPK-74 replaced in the real world. Worse, that RPD model is lifted directly fromModern Warfare 2, complete with a Picatinny rail over the feed tray that shouldn't exist for another nine years at that point. The player also has the option of invoking this with the singleplayer version of Create-a-Class; nothing is preventing them from taking an '80s gun they like into the 2025 levels, for instance using an old M16 (misidentified as the improved M16A1) when the standard JSOC rifles seem to be the HK416 and a slightly dressed-up XM8... or, after completing the game, doing the opposite and, say, fighting a battle in the Angolan Civil War with the KRISS KARD pistol (still not in production even years after the game came out) and a completely fictional weapon like the cover-penetrating, x-ray-scoped "Storm PSR".

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 deliberately invokes this in the "Demon Within" level, most of which takes place in a weird sort-of flashback to the Battle of the Bulge from World War II - period-accurate soldiers, wearing period-accurate uniforms, getting support from period-accurate armor, but other than the rare appearance of a mounted MG42, all using the same array of fictional futuristic weapons the player gets, all of which are from at least a hundred and twenty years in the future from when the actual battle took place.

The Battlefield series has been subject to this trope ever since its first installment. Examples:

The American and Russian Sniper and Engineer classes used British Lee-Enfield No. 3 rifles instead of Springfield M1903s or Mosin-Nagant rifles. A later patch replaced the USMC Engineer's No. 3 with the M1 Garand, but the US Army Engineer as well as the Sniper for both factions still use the Lee-Enfield.

The Russian and British Assault class originally used the Browning Automatic Rifle. A later patch replaced the Russian BAR with the DP-1928, and the SAS Assault in the Secret Weapons of WWII expansion got the Bren.

The Assault classes in general all use machine guns that were not issued nearly as extensively as they appear in the game - nor were they as weak as in the game. The actual bolt-action and semi-auto rifles that were standard issue are the ones used by the aforementioned Sniper and Engineer classes.

The Russian medic uses an MP-18, as opposed to the ridiculously common PPSH-41. This might be for balance reasons, as the PPSH's 71-round drum would give Russian medics a noticeable advantage in multiplayer note Although, the PPSH could also use 35-round box mags.

Most of the Japanese classes in general all use German weapons, while the Engineer uses the experimental and never issued Type 5 Rifle. The Assault class used the StG 44, though like the above, a patch eventually replaced it with the Type 99.

The Russian army in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 uses two Russian assault rifles and a handgun alongside Chinese machine guns and sniper rifles and a Swedish RPG. What's even weirder is that the game features a wide assortment of much more sensible modern Russian firearmsnote though still preferring rare guns over actual standard-issue hardware - the standard AK-74 or AK-74M is completely ignored in favor of the prototype AEK-971, the special forces-only AN-94, and the less-issued but far more well-known AKS-74U carbine, but the majority of them are only usable in multiplayer.

In general, starting with Battlefield 3, players can choose from a wide assortment of weapons... such as weapons that were never used by the playable factions (such as the F2000, the KH2002, and the FAMAS Surbaissé), weapons that were only designed for civilian use (like the Cobray Street Sweeper and Barrett Model 98B), and even weapons that never even left the prototype stage (the MP-412 REX, Magpul PDR, and Pancor Jackhammer).

Hardline is arguably even worse in this regard. It's one thing to imagine an experimental assault rifle in the hands of a spec ops trooper, it's an entirely different ball game imagining them being used by domestic law enforcement, let alone gang-bangers.

This is what some people are complaining about in Battlefield 1, what with the prevalence of automatic weapons and prototype firearms, instead of the bolt-action rifles and melee weapons that were so common in World War I.

Crysis has the "SCAR" as the default US assault rifle, except the game was produced before the SCAR trials were finished and the rifle shown in-game has elements of both Heckler & Koch's XM8 and Fabrique Nationale's proto-SCAR from the time.

While all the other guns in the original Unreal Tournament (set around 2293) are futuristic enough, the game's sniper rifle is merely a long-barreled, early model M16 with a scope attached to the carry handle, a rather out-of-place Shout-Out to Golgo 13. Lampshaded in the old official site's timeline of the series, where the in-universe explanation for replacing it with the Lightning Gun in UT2003 was that it was "a relic of centuries past".

Halo, set in the mid-26th century, still fluffs most of the UNSC's weapons as using cartridges originating from the 20th century. Though canon has occasionally implied that these aren't quite the same as the 20th century originals, the only apparent advancement in ammunition we see in the original trilogy is a caseless weapon (the SMG from Halo 2 and on) that's actually viable in sustained combat. The series also tends to favor larger calibers than real-world militaries would use for the same purposes no matter how overpowered such a round would be, which already reaches the apex of silliness in the first game - the pistol is firing what is essentially .50 Action Express, yet while the Super Soldier Master Chief properly uses both hands to fire it, none of your allies seen using it (and none of whom are augmented in any way, mind) have any issues one-handing the thing without the gun smacking into their faces after every shot. There's also the sniper rifle, which at first glance appears to be a barely-modified Denel NTW-14.5.

The Grease Gun serves as the main "assault rifle"... of the Czechoslovakian army in 1989.

In the same game, literally everyone uses the Colt 1911 as sidearm. Forget Beretta, Makarov, Norinco, or any other brand or caliber that would be more plausible for non-American folks to carry.

To a very slightly less absurd extent, all AK-74 assault rifles you find have been modified to chamber 5.56mm NATO. While it makes sense for the Shop's armory to have theirs modded as such for logistics's sake, it's not nearly as plausible for terrorist cells to do the same considering how much easier the 74's original 5.45mm ammo is to come by.

In Fallout, the standard caliber seems to be 10mm for pistols and submachine guns. Also, Desert Eagles are plentiful as well. Something that all Fallout games feature are man-portable miniguns.

Fallout 2 introduces Tommy Guns (using 50-round drum magazines) and Grease Guns as the only .45 caliber weapons. It also has town guards carrying as standard issue the rare G11 caseless weapons and the never-produced Pancor Jackhammer and H&K CAWS shotguns.

Fallout Tactics has the Chauchat machine gun from World War 1 as a joke weapon, even though it was manufactured in France and only during the war. It was also notoriously unreliable - it will not fire in the game.

Fallout 3 introduces the "Chinese Assault Rifle", which is an AK-47 clone chambered for 5.56mm. This may be justified as Chinese infiltrators invading the continental United States during the war (it's confirmed that they were pushing into Alaska, and the L.O.B. Enterprises building where you find a unique version of the "Chinese Pistol" has terminals confirming they were working for the Chinese military).

Fallout: New Vegas adds a lot of old western lever-action weapons to the mix, but they justify adding the Colt M1911 (though never mentioned by name) with the Honest Hearts DLC, by including it as the weapon of choice of the New Caananites.note New Caanan is explicitly stated to be built on the ruins of Ogden, Utah. John Moses Browning, designer of the M1911, was a Mormon from Ogden.On the other hand Honest Hearts also adds the Tommy Gun as from 2, with the option of the 50-round drum mag, for no apparent reason other than they apparently wanted more than one non-unique gun firing the DLC's new .45 Auto ammo. Other DLC also introduces three more man-portable miniguns, which for some reason fire pistol rounds (in .357 and .44 caliber in Old World Blues, plus a 10mm one in Lonesome Road).

Invoked and exaggerated in Mega Man X: Command Mission. One of the weapons that Axl, a robot in the year 22XX, can equip is a flintlock pistol. Referred to as an "Ancient Gun", it's also his strongest single-hit weapon in the game and always scores a Critical Hit on bosses. It's also guarded by the strongest Bonus Boss in the game.

The armored vehicle variant shows up in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, with its Twenty Minutes In The Future setting. Many of the vehicles such as the M2 Bradley (here called a "light tank" which it isn't), the M110 Howitzer, and AH-64 Apache are featured, all more-or-less contemporaneous U.S. equipment. The only problem is that many of them (including the above three) were Nod units. Sure, the United States hasn't been above supplying... let's call them "partisans", in the past, but it doesn't usually ship them current-model military vehicles at the same time as it funds the UN force opposing them. This gets even worse in Command & Conquer: Renegade, where Nod now has the RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter, a design that was hyped for a number of years (and also ended up semi-properly showing up in Generals as a US-only helicopter) but ultimately was not adopted and only had two prototypes. On the other hand, intentionally or not it could be a demonstration of how technology ended up going in different ways from reality thanks to the economic repercussions of Tiberium's arrival - cutscenes, for instance, indicate that the YF-23, another aircraft that only had two prototypes in reality, is GDI's standard jet fighter before they introduce the completely fictional Orca, while the YF-22, the winning competitor in the Advanced Tactical Fighter program that was developed into the F-22 Raptor, is used by Nod in those cutscenes.

Enemies early in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory are armed with the AICW, a prototype weapon system that was essentially to the Australian version of the AUG as the XM29 OICW was to the American M16. Unlike most other occurrences of this trope, however, this is actually a plot point, as after Sam overhears a guard test-firing his weapon (noting that he thinks Kalashnikov when he thinks of guerrillas, and has had enough of those fired at him over his life to know that what he heard was not one) he is given optional objectives for this and the second mission to find and tag weapon crates to find out where exactly small-time Colombian guerrillas are getting such advanced hardware from.

Western Animation

Seth MacFarlane shows technically fall into this with pistols: All are drawn as the exact same model, but are identified as what the character in question would logically be using. For example, in Family Guy, all pistols appear as M1911's, but in one episode, Stewie identifies one held by an Army recruiter as an M9.

Real Life

Andy Rooney (who was a correspondent during WWII) once told the story of a platoon of American soldiers who came across a German weapons cache. Either out of curiosity or necessity, they equipped themselves with the best guns the Third Reich had to offer. To paraphrase: "A U.S. mortar team, hearing the familiar sound of German firearms to their flank, dropped round after round on that position until the firing stopped..."

In Generation Kill, Captain America, who is frequently seen carrying some variety of AK alongside his standard M16, is chewed out by his very annoyed Sergeant for this very reason.

This was why the US discouraged its soldiers from taking AK-47s in Vietnam. They are the preferred weapon of the enemy, which make a distinctive sound when fired. However, at the time US riflemen were equipped with an early model of the M16 which was notorious for design faults and a tendency to jam at inappropriate moments (discussed in detail elsewhere on the wiki), no matter how well looked after. The AK-47, by contrast, was and still is famed for its durability and reliability, so it boiled down to a choice between being unable to shoot anyone or being shot at by everyone.

For the same distinctive sound, Special Forces teams used them instead of the M16. Any enemy hearing a shot simply heard a fellow soldier shooting enemies.

Similarly, there was at least one American unit in World War 2 that got itself trapped behind German lines and ran low on supplies. They ended up having to hunt venison using captured German rifles to avoid alerting enemies to their presence. On the other side, German soldiers loved to use Allied semi-auto rifles (the M1 Carbine was particularly well-liked for its light weight, low recoil and high magazine capacity compared to anything else available at the time; the SVT-40, meanwhile, served as the inspiration for their own later Gewehr 43) and Russian submachine guns whenever they had the chance to do so, giving the PPSh-41 a unique designation (MP717(r)) and even making a 9mm version of it.

There are numerous photos from the Eastern Front showing German troops with Russian Tokarev and Simonov semi-automatic rifles in 1941-43, in addition to the PPSh-41 submachine guns. During the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa, they captured so much Soviet materiel that it just made sense to use the weapons and ammunition. In addition, inter-service rivalry between the Wehrmacht (the regular army, which controlled the weapons procurement process) and the Waffen-SS meant that early in the war, the Waffen-SS relied heavily on captured foreign weapons.

Two fun facts on the ammo score; first, the Russian SMGs that used 7.62x25mm Tokarev easily fit into the German logistics train because it was an enhanced version of the 7.63x25mm Mauser round, which the Germans had lots of. And second, the reasons the British Sten Gun was chambered for 9mm Parabellum, the German issue round, were first of all that no comparable self-loading pistol round was made in England (SMGs don't work too well with rimmed revolver cartridges); and second, when the Italian forces in North Africa surrendered to the British 8th Army in 1941 (before the Afrika Korps arrived), part of the booty was several million rounds of Italian-made 9mm Para ammunition, as their Beretta SMGs also used it (this one actually backfired, sometimes horribly: the Italian rounds came either in an underpowered variant for older World War I models or an overpowered one for the Beretta Mod. 38: if used on more modern guns, the underpowered rounds would fail to cycle and cause a jam, and the overpowered ones could only be used with the Mod. 38s or they'd literally blow up the gun).

Similarly convenient for the Germans was that many of the nations they conquered in first years of the war used variants of the Mauser bolt-action rifle, which not only fired the same 7.92x57mm round as the German K98k but were similar in size and even had bolts that were interchangeable with the K98k. Likewise, Poland and Czechoslovakia used light and heavy machine guns chambered in 7.92x57mm, allowing the Germans to press all those weapons into service without any logistical problems.

British infantry units realized there was no comparison between their Bren guns and the standard German squad MGs (MG34 and MG42) when it came to laying down sheer volume of fire (the Bren remained unparalleled for delivering short bursts of extremely accurate MG fire, but sometimes you need more than a thirty-round magazine). As often as not captured German MGs would be pressed into service - but at the risk of their distinctive sound bringing down the wrong sort of attention from friendly forces mistaking the users for Germans. The Armored Corps in particular would often use German machine guns or others in the same 8mm Mauser, like the Besa, on some models of tanks because their supply chain was separate from the main Army's, thus not causing many issues by the use of non-standard equipment.

The Beretta Mod. 38 SMG was used on both sides of the conflict, as it could fire standard 9mm Para rounds just as well as the preferred overpowered variant and was extremely reliable and accurate, even if large and heavy, so Allied forces would use captured weapons... And, after the start of their occupation of Northern Italy (including the factories they were made in), the Germans would buy part of the production, including the overpowered round (West Germany army and federal police would continue using them until the sixties). Also, a small number (50) was used by Imperial Japan, successfully delivered in spite of Allied blockade.

The FNAB-43 and TZ-45 SMGs, produced in the Italian Social Republic (the Mussolini-led puppet state created by the Germans in the areas of Italy they occupied), was used by both Mussolini's soldiers and German troops. The latter was also used by Burmese troops (the State of Burma, being a puppet of Imperial Japan, was considered an ally, so they were allowed to produce it under licence).

The Carcano Mod. 91 rifle and its variants have the others beat through sheer weirdness, being used by: Ethiopia (that actually acquired it before the Italian Army itself: emperor Menelik, aiming to shake the Italian protectorate, used the credits Italy had given him to buy it. As he was successful, he never paid for it); Bulgaria; Persia; Romania; Saudi Arabia; Finland (Italy had tried to switch to a more powerful rifle round but had to abort due the early start of World War II, so they shipped there all the new rounds they had manufactured and a number of rifles to help in the Winter War, where, after a trial period on the frontline, was issued to rear-guard troops and the Navy due the logistical issues of keeping the troops supplied and other issues); Somalia (as a consequence of its past as an Italian colony); Imperial Japan (after the invasion of China, all Arisaka production was required to supply the Army, so the Navy, that needed rifles too, contacted Italy under the terms of the Anti-Comintern Pact, and was supplied with 120,000 Carcano rifles modified to use a box magazine and the standard Japanese round); the Independent State of Croatia (a puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy); and the National Liberation Army of Libya during the 2011 civil war (another remnant of the past as an Italian colony. Militants found them in government arsenals or simply passed them down in the family until they were used again at war). Captured guns would be used by various states who found themselves with them... with an American-captured one being sold via mail order and used for a rather infamous assassination.

It's not unusual for regular Army units to get some familiarization training with common enemy weapons, as well as those used by allied nations; British soldiers get to run a couple of magazines through an M16A4, for example. Doing this when it's not absolutely necessary (i.e. you've run out of ammunition or your weapon is damaged beyond repair) is nevertheless depreciated.

During World War I, the Royal Italian Army dealt with its perpetual machine gun shortage (caused by idiotic political decisions) by using whatever could fire in a burst they could get their hands on. Meaning that, aside for weapons produced locally or bought from allies or the US, Italian troops relied on Austro-Hungarian machine guns (more reliable than the standard FIAT machine gun of the Italians, put into production over a better and cheaper model due to bribery) and older gunpowder multi-barreled rapid-fire weapons, ranging from sensibly-sized weapons like the Nordenfelt gun to the 1-inch Nordenfelt gun (for naval use against torpedo boats) and the QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss (another naval weapon).

There are more firearms in China that are not classically Communist-ish than other "red" countries.

The Chinese army used Austrian SSG 69 sniper rifles in the China-Vietnam war of 1979, imported through third-party countries. Today, the SPC (Special Police Commando) and PLA Special Force units use its descendant, the SSG 3000, and American Remington M700 rifles for hostage rescue and patrol missions.

The most common machine gun in China, the Type 67 is an upgraded WWII-era DPM, itself an upgrade of the DP28.

Licensed copies of Czech, Polish and Israeli SMGs are produced and used in small scale by the Chinese Armed Police Forces.

The SPC in Chungqing used CQA assult rifles and NR08 SMGs in the past decade, the former is a semi-licensed AR-15 copy and the latter is an MP5 copy.

With genuine enemy equipment often hard to come by, training units that simulate enemy forces often use friendly vehicles and aircraft painted - and sometimes structurally modified - to look like those of enemy forces.

During WWII the Russians trained dogs to run under tanks, the plan being to strap them with bombs and unleash them on the advancing Germans. They lacked actual German tanks to train with, however. When released in the field, the dogs performed exactly as trained and went under their own tanks. This was compounded by the fact that Soviet tanks had diesel engines, whereas their German counterparts ran on petrol; the differences in scent were likely to have confused the dogs, and they sought out the more-familiar smelling tanks.

It should be noted however, that thanks to Lend-Lease Act, the Soviet Red Army utilised a substantial number of British Matilda, Cromwell and Churchill tanks, as well as American Sherman tanks. Several American weapons also saw service with the Red Army thanks to Lend-Lease; the famous AK, in fact, had its bolt essentially copied from a leased M1 Garand.

Truth in Television: As the Soviet Union declined, a lot of Soviet-made A Ks started popping up all over the world.

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